You can blend it all together to make a sauce to put on beef or lamb, or eat it on its own!

I used to love getting gyros from Greek food carts. It was seriously one of my main pleasures in life for a while there.

My favorite part was the tzatziki sauce over that spicy beef or lamb. While I can’t have the bread any more, I can still have the flavors! I like to eat this as a salad, but you can blend it up or chop your cucumbers much smaller to use it as a sauce.

This Fido full of beans is ready for a dark cupboard! The purple will fade and the liquid will turn pink!

Just about any vegetable can be lactofermented! This nothing to do with milk, although some people do like to kickstart their vegetable ferments with whey (here’s why we don’t). Instead, it’s all about the lactobacillus bacteria, which convert the sugars into lactic acid. The salt used in the brine makes an environment that’s inhospitable to other bacteria, the vessel you use keeps air and contaminants out, and the acid created by the lactobacillus preserves the food, creating pickles!

Pepper season is on its way out but we want to enjoy them as long as possible! We’ve been missing hot sauce, so we thought we’d give a lactofermented version a try. A little inspiration from The Nourished Kitchen and a trip to the farmer’s market got us started. We also made a sweet version of this sauce – the peppers change, the technique stays the same!

Remember when handling peppers, even ones that don’t seem to have much heat, that it’s a good idea to wear gloves! Making contact with *any* mucous membranes even many hours later … Continue reading Lactofermented Hot Sauce

We’ve still got boxes of apples sitting around waiting for something good to happen to them. The sweeter and softer they get, the less appetizing they are. But all is not lost. Applesauce, Apple Butter, Apple Crisp, have been staples around here but now I’m trying something new! Apple chutney!

Wardeh over at GNOWFGLINS posted this 5-Spice Apple Chutney. I didn’t have all the ingredients on hand, but since I can’t follow a recipe without making it my own I thought I’d take it as inspiration and see what happens anyway. Here’s how I did … Continue reading Probiotic Apple Chutney

We’ve been enjoying the “Hey girl.” meme for quite a while. Ryan is just so dreamy when he talks library cards, feminism, homebirth, and homeschooling to us. But something was missing. Say hello to Real Food Ryan Gosling and Gluten Free Ryan Gosling.

Here’s a sample – click the images to the tumblr feeds! If you have ideas for more, let us know and we’ll try and work them in

I attempted my first batch of sauerkraut the Nourishing Traditions way: by using whey skimmed from yogurt as a starter. Note the use of the word “attempted.” You got it: miserable failure. Rotten cabbage. Gross.

I consulted my friend Chris, a veteran fermenter, over at Lost Arts Kitchen. She told me to forget the whey and buy Sandor Katz’s book, Wild Fermentation. Incidentally, I suggest you do the same. For my next batch, I relied on the soil bacteria that came preloaded on my organic cabbage to ferment it and give me sauerkraut. It turned out beautifully.

Water kefir is a fixture on my fermenting counter. I’ve always got at least a quart, and sometimes two, bubbling away under a towel. It’s the easiest ferment to make by far and is a nice, gentle probiotic.

Water kefir “grains” are actually not grains at all, but SCOBYs (symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeasts), like tiny kombucha mothers or milk kefir grains. They are a mix of lactobacillus, streptococcus, pediococcus, and leuconostoc bacteria along with yeasts from saccharomyces, candida, and kloeckera held together by a polysaccharide matrix. They feed on sugar from … Continue reading Water Kefir

Homemade mayo, though, that’s a horse of a different color. Creamy. Tangy. Delicious. No non-food ingredients. The perfect ingredient for homemade ranch or blue cheese dressing. One problem, though. It goes bad in a week! While we like mayo just fine, we are hard pressed to go through a pint in a week.

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